Probably the best PTB yet

With the PTB coming to a close soon I wanted to provide some feedback over everything related to the PTB. With that being said, this has by far been my favorite PTB yet as I feel like mostly everything feels great to play with. With this feedback I will go over what I think was done right, wrong and overall ask a few questions about things I wasn't too sure about.

First, I will get into the QoL changes for the base game itself before getting into the new perks, perk changes, new map and the Demogorgon itself.

Bloodweb & Lobby Changes

I personally like the lobby changes a lot as it's finally more convenient to play the game with some friends and also have easier access to invite them whereas before it was more tedious. However it appears that the quick switch between survivor and killer was removed which confused me, is this intended?

The bloodweb changes were a good attempt to help fix the grind as I noticed I was able to obtain all the perks I needed on the new killer way sooner than on any of the previous PTB chapters, although at the same time I feel as if it won't be as useful to newer players who have way more to catch up on and seems to be better for the people who already have a bunch of killers leveled up and a means of achieving more points. Either way the change is definitely nice and I'm glad to see it working effectively in action.

New Perks & Updated Perks

Second Wind - Initially when I saw that this perk was changed, I was concerned that this perk was going to be too strong. However upon playing against it, I realized that it didn't really impact me much as I don't tunnel or camp people anyways. With that being said, I believe that the changes made this perk a more attractive choice and will be a nice alternative perk for healing which is always nice to see. However I would like to know why changes were considered for the perk only out of curiosity on my end.

Camaraderie - I had no real opinions of the perk before and I honestly have no real opinions of the perk now considering that I haven't seen it impact my matches at all yet. It seems like a nice perk, but it's hard to tell as it feels very situational.

Babysitter - This perk is a great concept that I'm glad is being used in the game now, it's especially nice to see a perk that temporarily removes blood trails. However, I feel as if the perk is not good enough for the purpose it's meant to serve which is to make a killer want to chase you rather than the person you unhooked. The reason why I say this is because I feel like the duration of the perk on the person you saved is too short and that a reasonable change would be to buff it to make it last 8/10/12 seconds instead.

Better Together - It's hard to tell if I like this perk or not, considering that I mostly played killer on the PTB I can't really notice its impacts and therefor it might not be reasonable for me to say if I think the perk is good or not. I can at least say that it's a nice concept for a perk.

Fixated - I love the concept of the perk and I especially like seeing that it not only allows you to see your scratches but also increases your walking movement speed. I believe that it will be a solid perk that not only will assist in mindgames but also completely juking the killer.

Inner Strength - This perk is nearly perfect because not only is it another alternative healing perk but it also gives people more of a reason to interact with totems rather than the fear that the killer might have NOED, making it more reasonable to waste your time doing totems as it provides a clear benefit to you. However I'm concerned that this perk will cause scenarios where a survivor basically has god mode when paired with DS as a killer won't be able to do anything to a survivor without losing in that scenario. By itself though, this is a great perk that I hope gets used often.

Dying Light - This is probably the only perk I can say that I have a major issue with. While I like that the perk is way healthier for the game, I have some problems with the new version of this perk which is the following ;

The perk has too many drawbacks which is that it buffs the obsession to perform altruistic actions 33% faster, doesn't effect the obsession and all the effort you put into building up the perk is lost if you kill your obsession and don't end up gaining a new one. People usually don't like to run the perks Myers comes with because they make you actively ignore killing the obsession and this perk is no different.

The numbers on this perk are too low, as a result of this the perk takes a long time to build up and by the time it has an impact, you've already won making it hard to tell if it actually had an impact on the match or not. Consider it this way, 6 tokens is the maximum amount of tokens you can receive before any survivors are killed off, making this the point where the perk is at its peak strength and highest impact on the match (even though the tokens can go higher than this), anything beyond this point is where the match turns around into the killer's favor and the perk becomes way less useful. 6 x 3% totals up to having an 18% slower action speed for 3 survivors and becomes less meaningful as people die vs thanatophobia which can stack up to 16% for all 4 survivors and is easier to get the full use out of it despite not being great. The difference here is that (in my opinion) Dying Light at its most meaningful point is roughly an extra 17.5 seconds per gen for 3 players vs Thanatophobia at its most meaningful point which is roughly 15.23 extra seconds per gen for all 4 players.

Lastly we have the part where I explain what changes I believe would help this perk. Keep in mind that I understand not all perks are meant to be great, this is just what I think would make the perk better. I believe that to make this perk useful the penalty should be increased to a flat 4% per token and have it so when the obsession dies you lose a token every 16/18/20 seconds at most.

Dark Sense & Left Behind - I don't have much to say about these perks other than the fact that I like the changes made to them and gives the perks more purpose than previously.

Surge - This is a nice concept, however I feel like this perk won't be used much and feels too weak due to the shorter range on it and the fact that it only works on basic M1 downs. While I can understand the possible reasons as to why the range is now 24 meters instead of 32, one change I strongly believe in is to allow downs by all means to activate the perk like how Infectious Fright works to make it a more attractive option to killers who have secondary attacks.

Mindbreaker - While I don't believe the perk is strong, I see it as being a solid choice for stealth killers like Pig, Ghostface, Myers and Wraith which will allow them to sneak up on players with sprint burst without being punished for making what was clearly the right play for the killer. I have no suggestions for this perk.

Cruel Limits - I personally don't like what the perk does while the perk itself is extremely situational and the range is too short. However I also have no reasonable suggestions for this perk as of currently other than to give it a secondary effect, but even then I don't know what that would be.

The Demogorgon

The killer seems like they are in an absolutely perfect spot, they're amazing to play as and against, the power is powerful but not oppressive, the visuals are awesome, the sounds are amazing and the killer is creepy - awesome work with this. I personally believe that this killer is the standard for a perfectly balanced killer apart from a few QoL tweaks every here and there. Each point below will cover my feedback on each part of the power.

The portals are nearly perfect. They create scenarios where the killer can ambush survivors, apply pressure, track and become a solid stalling tool overall. However I do feel like sometimes the portals go too quickly and believe it wouldn't be entirely too unreasonable to slightly increase the time it takes to break the portals. Otherwise they're perfect.

Shred is perfect, a solid power that can be used at basic pallet tiles, jungle gyms and the killer shack at the hands of a good player while also generally not being too oppressive apart from the scenarios where the killer can just cancel their power and lunge immediately. I've also noticed the animation of this power has actually scared some players and keeps them on edge. However, what I would like to know is if it's reasonable to make it so the camera sensitivity isn't as stiff during the cooldown animation of using shred as a simple QoL change as it can feel bad in some scenarios.

Unrelated to the strength of the killer, I really like that the sounds are global as it adds a really cool atmospheric effect to the trials and overall I believe that this PTB has put forward a killer that is the closest to being perfect out of any other PTB release ever. Awesome work with this.

Hawkins National Laboratory

The map looks amazing and overall I feel like it plays well for the most part, however even as a person who mostly plays killer I feel like some of the pallets are too weak and too many of them place the survivor in a scenario where they either stun the killer or die without much further gameplay from there. The only two changes I would suggest is to slightly increase the strength of the hallway pallets and to add hooks to the second floor of the map which can otherwise be abused for permanent safety from being hooked.

With that being said, I think this PTB was amazing to play on and for the first time in a while, the content was really worthwhile to test out and really enjoyable overall. I do understand that I haven't said anything about the new ring addon or Demogorgon's addons however I would like to save that for sometime after the release.